I bought a 1998 Subaru Forester with AM/FM, cassette & CD player. The radio and CD player work fine, but it looks like coffee was spilled into the tape player. Any suggestions on how to fix or clean it? Nothing moves in it.

Cathy Jay, January 2006

I agree with Gary on the Isopropanol (IPA), depends on how bad the spillage is and how much fluff and grime has been attracted to it. With the IPA, do avoid the capstan bearings & gears as it will dry them out. My favourite for this sort of thing is a foaming cleaner which lifts the grime out and does not attack oil-based stuff leaving your gear assemblies and bearings intact.
Make sure you clean the coffee off the PCB's too as left long-term this can cause problems.
You could IPA the whole thing (with no power attached :-) and then re-oil all the bearings etc but that's boring, the foaming cleaner can be fairly liberally applied, left to soak for a while and daubed off with cotton buds.
Coffee with sugar is not too bad, coke will often dissolve PCB tracking and motor parts.
Hope this helps?
G

Graham Arnott, March 2006

A common problem on these cars, due to the design of the cupholder. I have a 1998 Legacy GT, and when I bought it, someone had spilled Coke into the heater controls. I fixed it by taking it apart and cleaning it out with alcohol on Q-tips, and replacing a couple of light bulbs which had burned out. This would be worth a try on your cassette player, too. The alcohol will not harm the electronics, and evaporated cleanly. Use Isopropyl alcohol from the drugstore. Alcohol is also used for head cleaning on cassette decks.

Hope this helps, and you get it going.

Gary

Gary Crowder, February 2006